Together We Grow and Calderdale Freedom From Torture collected clothes, food, shoes, blankets, soaps, toothbrushes, etc for the refugee camps in Northern France. We had collection points at a couple of local churches and collected from people’s homes.
In the end we had so much that we could fill a van. Many thanks for all the donations. This would be part of a national convoy going to Calais on 18th June. Three people from Blackshaw Head went to London on the 17th for a rally for the convoy and went to the vigil for Jo Cox, the MP that got murdered.
On 18th June the national convoy met at Whitehall in London at 8.30AM. There were 250 lorries, vans, minibuses and cars in the convoy. From there we went to Dover.
Although the convoy had been planned for months the French authorities only decided just before the start of the convoy departure to ban entry to France for “security reasons”.
At Dover we could not get on the ferry – only two lorries and a few cars managed to get through. So a protest erupted at the ferry entrance but without any violence happening and after the protest the convoy went to the French Embassy in London to protest.
All the stuff collected in Upper Calder Valley had been shifted into a lorry from Newcastle that goes to Calais with supplies every month via the tunnel rather than using the ferry. However, even this lorry was refused entry to France. A new attempt will be tried later.
